Acting Pedagogy as a Way of Subjectification: Teaching Acting in the Context of the Educational Philosophy of Gert J.J. Biesta

Biesta defines three basic dimensions of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification. In the teaching of acting, qualification and socialization are inevitable. This paper focuses on subjectification in acting pedagogy. Subjectification is what makes the actor’s situation truly existential. Stanislavsky’s expression of the existential experience of being here and now is “Ya yesm” and finds its most evident exponent in the method of Active Analysis. Psychologist, writer, performer, and teacher Ivan Vyskočil developed the principle of radical openness in his discipline of “the dialogical acting with the inner partner,” in which the actor learns to listen to his inner impulses and respond authentically without fear of making mistakes. Stanislavsky and Vyskočil similarly argue that acting cannot be learned through imitation of patterns, but that the actor must become the subject of action, radically open to the situation and audience. Finally, the text focuses on education as practical wisdom and the acting teacher as “phrominos,” capable of making wise educational decisions which are always specific to the educational task in question.